


Download

by ladytrollfishes (tangelotime)



Series: Standalone Character Drabbles [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, THIS IS A FANTROLLS THING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 05:03:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16675012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangelotime/pseuds/ladytrollfishes
Summary: Download can know the biological make up of anything by tasting it. As such, he's sold his identity to the magical detective squad hunting down supernatural horrors so he can live a decent life with the people he loves, who are also all supernatural detectives who love him.Here's some drabbles.





	1. Chapter 1

Download | 11 sweeps, 22 years | Malseka | 1209 words |  **cw: discussion of unsanitary stuff**

——

You unlock the door and immediately sprawl to the ground. You missed carpeting. It was as though you’d never escape the linoleum tile of the office.

“D!” you hear Virus shout, concerned, rushing to your side.

“He’s fine, he’s fine,” Sniffer says, skipping next to you with a giggle. “Just misses the carpet.”

You give a thumbs up from where you lay, face down on the floor in assent. Firewall gives a quiet huff, and says. “Don’t scare us like that please.”

“Wow, okay. C'mon Download,” Virus says exasperated. “Fucking drama queen. If you’re fine then go get in the damn shower before you get all your disgusting quarantine germs on our floor.”

Sniffer steps behind you to shut the door as you lift your head, tilted just so to glare up at Virus through the curtain of your hair, slightly tangled from the harsh chemicals of decontamination they were subjected to when you left the office.

“You know quarantine protocol as well as we do,” Sniffer says. Not as well as you do. You’re the only one who gets pulled in every time some wacko sprays their latest bioterror virus somewhere they think is clever. “W-well, I mean D knows better than us most likely! But you know he has to decon before he leaves.”

You hate quarantine protocol.

You despise it. Whenever someone drops a bioterror threat, everyone comes running to you to solve their problems. Your psi is, as far as anyone can tell, unique, and perfectly suited to puzzle through what ever biohazard the universe thinks is so clever. You can’t deny that, and so whenever something comes up, you’re forced to deal with the sick and the disgusting to try and take care of things at ground zero. And you have to do it without your team, not that Virus was making the prospect of returning hive all the more pleasant.

“Who knows. I bet he missed something,” they say. You flip them off. One night you’d make them eat their own mask and choke on their words.

“Oh hush,” Sniffer says. “You‘re bothering Download.” She giggles nervously. Of course the dear wouldn’t translate that directly.

“Both of you stop talking around him,” Firewall says and steps forward and hauls you up by your shoulders to try and prop you up on your feet but you just wrap your arms around her neck and lean into her instead. She sighs exasperatedly but she hugs you back. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

“Aww, group hug!” Sniffer says wraps her arms around you too. The contact is so, so, nice after a night spent avoiding vomiting sick people. Firewall has such strong arms, holding up most of your weight as you lean in, gentle as a feather. She never forgets you’re a little more fragile than the rest of them. Sniffer lays her head against your shoulder, and gives you a gentle squeeze. “C'mon Virus!”

“Sorry, not touching him until we know he’s all the way clean,” they say and head for the stairs. “I’ll go run a bath and add those frilly epsom salts and the eucalyptus bubble shit he’s going to poison himself with one night. …And I’ll put the mouthwash out.”

Virus is a dick, but they’re a dick with good taste at least. You do need to do some serious conditioning to get your hair back to proper shape. You’ll have to break out the fancy stuff.

“Oh and grab the conditioner he keeps under the sink too!” Sniffer calls after them.

“Roger!” they call down.

Now all you really need is something decent to eat. Quarantines were always a ticking time bomb with you. You brought a pack of nutrient bars that no one else was allowed to touch lest your psi starts sputtering and you get sick too. You make them yourself in bulk, but there’s only so much granola and honey you can eat before you start making yourself sick.

“I’ll make you some pasta,” Sniffer says, and bustles off to the kitchen. “Probably won’t be as good as your arugula spaghetti stuff but it’ll be better than granola! Just let me take care of it.”

Firewall adjusts so that she can sling an arm around your shoulders and bring you to the kitchen.

“How is the office?” she asks. “We were worried.”

You stretch your shoulders out, toss your hair past your shoulders and settle into a seat before you decide you’re ready to talk.

“No one died,” you begin, “but I did have to eat vomit.”

Firewall shudders and pats you on the back. “You found who did it,” she says. Some tension melts inside you at her words, and you tap your head onto her shoulder in assent, the warmth of her appreciation pooling in your chest. It makes it worth it.

“One of the biopunk taggers put worms in the coffee and they bred like crazy,” you say. “Everyone who drank any ended up puking their guts out, and a few people passed out from dehydration. Memory concussed himself though after he hit his head on a toilet.”

“Ooo,” Sniffer hisses in sympathy. “He always did like his coffee.”

“What happened to the tagger?” Firewall asks. “Did they find them?”

“Sitting in a cell waiting for justice,” you say with a grim smile. “And she’ll get it, for the sake of all the janiterrorists who have to clean up all the puke.”

Virus lopes back down the stairs.

“Bath’s ready,” they say. “And Sniffer’s cooking? Wow, we spoil you.”

You lean back in your chair to smirk at them. “You eat vomit for the greater good and you can get fed too.”

Virus blanches with their whole body, a hand on their mask as they pull it against their face.

“Gross,” they say. “Fuck, now I need the mouth wash.”

“Suffer,” you say, and stretch, lacing your hands together and pulling them up above your head, making sure to make eye contact with Virus. Their back meets the wall, flustered before they flip you off with both hands as Sniffer laughs.

“I’ll go take a shower before that bath then,” you say, putting a hand on Firewall’s shoulder and patting it before you stand. Sniffer, at the stove throws you a grin as you give her a half embrace.

“Food will be waiting for you when you come down!” she says.

You’d hip check Virus on your way upstairs, but that’d only make them get paranoid about bacteria so you settle for a wink. Virus gives you a dramatic groan in return and slips past you to take a seat at the kitchen. You grin as you take a few steps up the stairs. Without turning around you pause.

“You know the worst thing about quarantine?” you say, then turn half way so you can see the rest of your team. “I have to do it without you guys.”

Virus puts their hands to their mouth and yells, “Gross!”

Firewall rolls her eyes. “Go clean up, nerd,” she says. “You can have feelings later.”

Sniffer just laughs and grins. “We missed you too, D.”

You laugh and saunter up the stairs. You adore your team. No one else knows better how to get you to relax.


	2. Download Fights A Drinker

_Download | Malseka | 12 sweeps, 24 years | 3899 words | tw: GORE. MESSY MURDEROUS GORE._

——

The lights pulse through the bar, spinning purple, blue and green, bright as the music is loud. You can barely hear the people speaking right next to you, and it’s only when the attractive strangers press their lips against your ears that you even hear what they’re saying. This stranger in particular is very attractive, his hair cut in tousled bangs that frame his deep set jade eyes. His horns sit at the top of his head in an smooth and easy curve. His fangs too, are an attractive curl from their lip and he even sprang for a gold tooth cap and a cascade of matching earrings.

“Your costume is amazing,” he says, fangs just brushing your cheek. “The best I’ve ever seen. Is that genuinely from the 3rd Empress’ reign?”  

It’s not, you know a very good costumer- but you appreciate the compliments. You’re dressed well, in a waist coat and cloak, with silver lapel pins and your eyes set for camouflage, yellow sclera, jade irises with a slit for a pupil. You flash a smile back, give him a sidelong glance and press your cheek back against the stranger, who isn’t exactly a slouch in the costume department either, dressed up in coattails and dripping in jewelry.

“Maybe,” you say. His cheek against yours feels too cold to be jade, but it’s a rainbowdrinker party- every other person’s got jade contacts in. “It’s on the label but I’m not taking my clothes off here.”

You pull back to wink at him and he actually covers his face to blush. Adorable. He doesn’t back off though- he reaches for you, putting his hands on your hips and stepping in closer. He’s just an inch shorter than you, and you watch pleased, as the multicolored lights illuminate a kind of wide-eyed hunger.

“What’s your name?” he asks in your ear and pulls back to watch you react. You toss your hair behind your shoulder, and lean back in.

“Let’s let this stay… anonymous,” you say. “Is that alright with you?”

“Y-yeah!” Your handsome stranger blushes and grins, showing off those lovely teeth and you lean in to put your mouth to his.

A tryst in a club isn’t anything new to you- a troll has his needs, and untangling Gordio’s knot sounds more appealing than bringing quads into your life as a PDPO officer. You’ve never liked anyone enough to try, nor were you eager to show off your profession in a club that had a fair stream of revenue coming from the sale of white angel in the bathrooms. You’ve come to their drinker parties every so often, but never while you were on the job, so technically, it doesn’t count. You’re pretty sure.

Your stranger is a pretty good kisser too. He’s careful not to let his fangs get in the way and leans into it as you nibble on his lip. Then- “Ow!”

You draw blood. He pulls back, shocked, and you have to laugh, careful to keep it sheepish.

“Sorry,” you say, sheepishly. “Got too enthusiastic.”

Your immunity to illness only counts for things that you eat, drink, and breathe. If you’re going to sleep with a stranger you may as well make sure he’s not diseased.

“What’s a drinker party without drinking a little blood?” you say with a grin and lick your teeth clean. He watches you do so and you can tell he’s not opposed to the sight, even as he holds up a finger, sucking on his lips.

You swallow the blood. The rush of information is a familiar one. It always takes you a while for you to sort everything out, but something stands out right away. He is jade, despite the temperature of his skin. His blood oxygen content is close to zero, with a fatal dose of potassium, as well as an overproduction of hormones not usually found in a troll’s body, but a rainbowdrinker worm.

Goddammit. At least it doesn’t have venereal disease, but it’s probably bled people dry with the mouth you were just kissing.

“C'mere,” the drinker says, leaning in and putting a hand to the back of your head, and you have to force yourself to lean back in, unless you want it to catch onto the fact that you’ve caught on. The curve of its fangs against your lips doesn’t seem as charming as it did five minutes ago. You can still taste the tang of blood in its mouth that reminds you that you’re kissing a walking corpse.

“What’s wrong?” it asks, pulling back, a concerned look on his face. Great, a gentleman rainbowdrinker now that you’re obviously not into it anymore.

You make a face.

“I feel bad about biting you,” you say instead, with a sidelong glance. “It’s just embarrassing.”

“You said it yourself,” the drinker replies, its head tilted in towards yours. “What’s a drinker party without drinking a little blood?”

Now it’s using your words against you, and you laugh it off like you mean it. It’s much less funny when you weren’t the one drinking blood. What would Virus say if they found your body here? You had your gun and badge, you weren’t stupid, but a bullet wouldn’t stop a drinker for very long.

“Let’s get some drinks,” you say instead. “It’ll take the edge off.”

To you, alcohol’s just a number and a process you can outline in your head so you don’t hesitate in ordering a large number of shots and insisting the drinker take as many of them as it can. You take a couple along with it, before you excuse yourself to the bathroom to call the first person who picks up.

You’re dialing Firewall as you walk into the lowblood bathroom. Drugs get sold in the highblood bathroom, and you’re not calling your squad from there. The lowblood one, however, did usually have at least two couples hooking up, but that was definitely a lesser evil.

There’s moaning coming from a stall when you walk in, but it’s otherwise empty. There’s three stalls and a small window up high you could probably fit through, even though you’re sure you could build a troll out of the grime in here.

Your phone stops dialing and you hear Firewall’s voice click through.

“D?” she says. You could practically melt with relief.

“Oh good,” you say, like you’re not about to panic. “Remember how I said I was going to a drinker party tonight?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

“Well. There’s a drinker here,” you whisper. “And I’m pretty sure it wants to drink my blood.”

“Where are you?” she asks. “I’m getting the team and coming over.”

“I’m in the bathroom,” you say. “It hasn’t caught on to the fact that I’ve caught on.”

There’s a pause.

“Then how do you know it’s a drinker?”

“I drank its blood, obviously.”

“How did-” there’s another pause on the line. “Download?” Firewall says slowly. “Did you seduce an actual drinker at a fake drinker party?”

You huff impatiently.

“Is that really the most important thing right now?” you snap, “Just tell me you’re on the way so I can climb out the bathroom window.”

Firewall lets out a bark of laughter and you roll your eyes.

“We’re coming,” she says. “But you need to stick with it. Don’t get bitten but if you get lost then it’ll go after other people. Stall. You’re on the job now. We’ll be there in twenty.”

You shut your phone and take a deep breath.

“Great,” you say to yourself. “Just great.”

All you have to do now is stall out a drinker who wants to get into your pants for twenty minutes. You can do that.

You walk out of the bathroom, straightening your waistcoat, glancing at the crowd for the drinker. You find it about where you left it, next to the bar, taking another shot. It looks, glum almost, staring into the bottom of the empty shot glass. Half of the dozen you ordered still stand full on at the bar. It didn’t drink very much while you were gone.

“Well who pissed in your whiskey,” you say with a smile, sliding back next to it. It glances up at you, sullenly.

“What,” it says, and presses up in close to you, hands on your shoulders till you can smell the alcohol in its breath. It’s not wasted, but it’s definitely drunk. “If I told you, rainbowdrinkers are real. And not just this fake bullshit either.”

It waves a hand at the crowd of partiers, dismissive. You lean back, and it lets go but steps forward to keep up with you.

“It’s not easy,” it says. “Living a life like this? I’m just trying to get by.”

He’s figured it out, somehow. It doesn’t take you long to realize. And now you’re in the arms of a monster.

“Um,”  you say, putting a hand on its shoulders, holding it arm’s length. “How much did you drink? Everyone knows drinkers aren’t actually real.”

It puts a hand over yours and holds it tight.

“It?” the drinker says, staring plaintively into your eyes. “That’s just hurtful. I heard you in the bathroom. Who did you call?”

Well, that’s not good.

“No one,” you say firmly, as you try to yank your hand away from it, but it’s got a good grip you can’t quite pull free. “You’re imagining things.”

“So if drinker’s aren’t real,” it says, raising your hand so that it bares your wrist next to his teeth. Your pumper throbs. “Then you won’t mind if I do this.”

Well. Shit.

You reach over the bar with your free hand, grab a bottle of whiskey by the neck and slam it into its face. It goes stumbling into a knot of people as the cries go up, a gash of dark blood oozing out of its forehead.

“How drunk are you bro!” someone yells, as the bartender leans over to seize you by the scruff of your cloak and tries to punch you in the head. You drop the whiskey, parry the blow, then press your thumb to the back of her knuckle and twist her grip off of you. She yelps as you shove her back behind her bar.

“PDPO!” you shout, pulling your firearm and take a shot at the ceiling. It’s too crowded for anyone to figure out what’s going on so the best thing is to get everyone out. You take your badge and hold it up so everyone knows you’re not to be messed with.

You lock eyes with the bartender as you point at the drinker.

“This man is under arrest for violation of Clause 3!” you shout. The “weirdness” clause. “He’s dangerous! Get everyone out!”

The bartender stares at you with wide eyes, looking at your badge, then your gun, then running off behind the bar. The information spreads like a slow ripple, those close enough to hear you yell starting to push and shove as far away from you as possible.

The drinker stares back at you, the blood oozing out of its head too slow for anything that’s alive. You can’t just shoot now, not at this range. If you kill anyone else here with a PDPO bullet, you’re going to need to justify it with a lot of paperwork, and the bullet will penetrate its body and hit whoever is behind it. But at the same time you can’t let it hide and run in the crowd, and at the very least, you are between it and the door.

It hesitates, then leaps over the bar, and tries to run past you. You level the gun and shoot three times, catching it in the side as it trips and falls to the floor. Bottles of expensive alcohol shatter behind it. Three bullets left. You were always bad at ammunition economy.

“Don’t move!” you shout as you lean over the bar, ignoring the wet sticky press of spilled alcohol against your very expensive costume. “Just- just stay down!”

The drinker snarls, jade blood oozing from the single shot you landed in its side. It picks itself up, and you see hunger in its eyes again, but not the kind you liked.

“Oh shit,” you mutter, as the drinker lunges at you, tumbling over the counter to the floor. “Shit shit shit.” You turn and run into the crowd, spinning behind the fleeing customers. You just pretend to be a drinker. You hate, hate, hate, dealing with actual drinkers. And you hate doing it alone.

Virus could have stolen someone’s psi and thrown it somewhere useless. Firewall could break a drinker in half, and Sniffer was a better shot than you were. And they all had more blood to lose than you.

Someone shrieks, loud, then a horrified gasp from the crowd. People start moving faster. You glance behind you, but all you can see is the backs of heads, so you shove your way to the bar again. You hook your heel on the brace of a bar stool and boost yourself up so you can see- the drinker’s taken someone from the crowd and is feeding off of him.

The victim’s dead either way. You take another couple of shots. You hit them both- the victim in the stomach- a swell of brown blood spurts over the drinker, but you hit the drinker too- who howls in pain and laps desperately at the blood you’ve spilled. One bullet left. You just need to hit the grub.

The drinker growls up at you, and lunges, obviously upset that you’ve interrupted its meal. You turn and run, pelting away from obvious, bloody death.

At least the club is almost empty now, though the lights still blare and the speakers shake the ground.

You run, for the stage, trying to think of some way you can pin down the angry drinker and kill it for good. The curtains maybe? You glance backwards, but the drinker is gaining on you. You wish you were a good enough shot to aim for a knee.

Before you can even think of trying to trap the drinker you need more distance. Can you lose a drinker that’s tracking your scent? No. Probably not. What you needed was a door that locked one way, preferably.

You dive into the wings of the stage, knocking lights and microphones behind you as you spot a door, slightly ajar. You throw it open and dive in, shutting it behind you. It’s dark, but you throw yourself forward, and crash into a wall. Several somethings fall on top of you and your gun goes off in the dark. A shower of drywall dust and mold lands on you, making you choke, coughing.

Great. You ran into a closet, and you wasted your last bullet.

A loud thump into the door scares you into another shelf, and another cascade of somethings. The drinker’s caught on, but in its enraged state, it’s having a little bit of trouble with doorknobs. A little bit of luck at least. You feel around for a light, and flick it on as the drinker throws itself into the door.

It’s a closet of cleaning supplies, bottles of cleaner, brooms, sponges, dust masks. Things absolutely useless for fighting drinkers. Well, maybe if you were lucky, the door would hold until the rest of your squad comes.

A hand smashes through the wooden door like it’s made of toothpicks and nearly misses grabbing your hair. You screech, jerking back from the door as you start looking for options in the mess of janiterrorist equipment.

There’s bottle of bleach- you look wildly around and find a bottle of glass cleaner with a high ammonia content. The drinker shoves another hand through the door and starts tearing through it as you do your best unscrew the caps of the cleaners without spilling too much. You untie your cape, throw a pile of sponges in it, and douse it with both cleaners.

You take a deep breath. Chloramine gas, at about 730 parts per million, wafting off the sponge. If drinkers could get drunk off of alcohol, breathing this in should be like getting stabbed in the lungs. You grab the corners of your cape to form a pillow of poison

The door splinters above you, the top half of the door just destroyed, as the drinker reaches in. You shove your cape in its face and the reaction is immediate. It chokes, coughing and wheezing and reeling backwards. It grabs your arms and sends you flying, stronger than a jade had any right to be. You hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of you, but you roll back to your feet, watching the drinker wretch and cough.

You look around for another weapon to use- there’s a pile of metal poles used for scaffolding, a clipboard on a black stand and a row of microphones wire hanging on the wall. You grab the cord and tie a loop at the end. If the drinker was in such a state it couldn’t deal with a door knob, you think it won’t deal too well with a slip knot either.

You’re not going to tie yourself to the drinker- that’s just asking to get thrown again. You hastily tie the other end of the rope to a curtain rail. The drinker snarls at you as you approach, but it’s still doubled over and wheezing. You’re careful to scoot around it, so that it’s between you and the curtain rail. You hesitate. Even if it’s poisoned and wounded, you don’t want to get actually bit.

It’s all the drinker needs apparently, because it lunges towards you, sensing weakness. It’s still a lot faster than you- your back hits the ground as you try to bring the loop of wire around the drinker’s head- it pulls taught against it’s horn, but it’s not enough to keep it from sinking its fangs into your forearm.

You shriek as yellow blood spurts from the wound and into the mouth of the drinker. It holds you tight enough to hurt as it tries to suck you dry. A curious sense of floatiness enters you. Drinker bites had sedatives in them, didn’t they? So this is what drugs felt like. Some part of you is tempted to lean into it, the soft feeling of not fighting anymore. The much smarter part tells you that you’ll die then, eaten by a monster because you were too stupid to fight.

Your arm feels like lead as you wrestle it to the drinker’s face and you stick a finger in its eye. It howls and lets go, rolling around on the ground, clutching its face and you stagger to your feet, holding your arm. At least your head is clearer now.

You stagger to the closet again and reach for a broom. You snap the head of the broom off and the pole splinters to an agreeable point. You needed to kill this stupid drinker before it killed you.

It’s staggers to its feet and in your direction. It’ll want blood to heal, and you don’t want it touching yours. You grab the wire still attached to its horn and step on it. The drinker stumbles at the tug and you smash the pole into its face, sending it careening to the ground. You pause, just a moment to catch your breath, and then you plunge the pole into the belly of the drinker.

It shrieks and kicks out at you- grabbing the pole. You jerk the tip around in its bowels, hoping to stab that goddamn worm, when it snaps the pole at its stomach, and this time the point is less agreeable. It’ll be good for a bludgeon and little else, so you take a couple cracks at its face, mangling its attractive face, breaking its nose and knocking out its teeth. Its hands fly up to its face and you tackle it, pulling out your impromptu wooden stake and stabbing into his bowels again and again.

Jade blood oozes all over your hands as the drinker howls, grabbing your hand and pulling it towards its mouth, but you did knock out all of its fangs. It still bites down on your fingers hard enough to draw blood so you toss the stake and stick your hand into the wound and start pulling. It’s not hard to find the worm, not after it’s eaten the host’s organs, but it’s hard to find the strength to pull it out. You’ve wounded it, you’re sure, you just need it to die. But you’re exhausted, alone, and a drinker is weakly, for a drinker, nibbling on your fingers.

You think about what Virus would say if they ever found out you died like this, and you feel up the drinker worm until you find a wound and dig your fingers in. You get your feet braced up against the drinker’s ribcage and you tear the worm in half.

The drinker shudders, and with a soft little “ow,” finally dies.

You stare at its body for a moment, pry your fingers from the drinker’s jaw, then lay down on the stage, staring up at the rope pulleys and set pieces hanging from the stage ceiling. You should probably get something to wrap your arm, but you’re tired enough that you’ll just rest for a bit. How long has it been since you called Firewall? When were they going to get here?

You wake up to Sniffer shaking your shoulder.

“Oh my goodness, Download!” she exclaims when your eyes flutter open. She jerks forward, but stops herself from throwing her body on top of yours. “Let me help with your arm.” She pulls out a first aid kit and starts cutting your sleeve away from the wound.

The house lights are on, and music is no longer shaking the floor. How long have you been asleep? The rest of your team stands over you, poking at the wreckage from your fight.

“I told you not to get bit, D,” Firewall says, sardonic, but you can see the worry in her eyes.

“You wore that to a drinker fight?” Virus says, leaning over you. “That could have ended up in the evidence pictures you know.”

“It’s ugly  _now_ ,” you say, as you try to push yourself upright to look at your clothes. Your voice sounds weak. Sniffer pushes you back down with a stern look. “It looked quite nice before I fought a drinker all by myself. What took you guys so long?”

“There was a traffic jam after a nearly packed nightclub evacuated into the streets,” Firewall says. “D, I told you to stall, not fight a rainbowdrinker one on one.”

It’s all you can do to shrug.

“You’re probably in shock,” Sniffer scolds. “Close your eyes to get some rest and we’ll get you to a mediculler. I can tell people what you want to say.”

You oblige. You’re exhausted and woozy, but your team should know about the chloramine cloak so they can take the proper measures to clean it up. Oh and since technically you’re here on duty now, you should let them know about the white angel in the highblood bathroom.

“There’s  _what_?” Sniffer exclaims.   

You groan and let your head loll against the floor. Well you definitely can’t come back here anymore.


End file.
